I am a bit of a wimp. Forget Lilly Allen’s no fear: I am very much part of the over-paranoid-hand-washing-superfood-eating-risk-reducing crowd; and, ironically, my membership of this gang made me the perfect candidate for the nofit circus’ latest visit to London.
Fear is really put into perspective when you see someone swinging across the ceiling on a trapeze. With no safety harnesses. It’s given a whole new shape when you see a face zooming down towards you from a bungee rope. Or watch the usher scooting up the scaffolding to throw herself onto a trampoline suspended in mid air. Or a gymnast dangling in the heavens and held by one foot.
Nofit circus is not just a spectacle – it is an experience. Remove the stage; take out any boundaries between performer and audience; mix circus with theatre with concert with social contemplation and story telling thrown in for good measure – and you get a mind blowing adventure into the full spectrum of human emotions.
From childish pleasure (an acrobat zooming amongst the audience on a mini bike and indulgent trampoline acrobatics) to erotic sensuality (a lithe, perfectly toned male acrobat enticing the audience with daring and beautiful rope antics); joy (swings and hula hoops and popcorn and a marriage in the air) to the black edge of insanity and desperation (a bewitching and devastating dance – on a trapeze wing): the emotions are not just written on the performers’ faces; they are also given to the audience. Tabu gets you thinking and feeling and being in a whole new way.
Because being scared seems incredibly pointless in the light of such fearlessness and such raw energy; and, whilst reality and common fears (popularity, death, control) are named and noted by the performers, the spotlight is on the far more powerful emotional abandonment – and a cautious lifestyle comes a long way behind the pleasure and vitality of this freedom.
Tags: getting out there
